Florence. That was pretty amazing. It was the first time I'd really been there (excepting the hour I spent waiting for my next train en route to Lucca); it was with the school on a 3-day Tuscany trip, the first big school trip of the year. We started off in Siena, spent the first night in Volterra, and then the next two nights in Florence. Siena I had already been to, and the trip had been a tad slow, so I wasn't too excited to go back at first. However it ended up being pretty awesome - I wandered around with Arina, and we found a cute little restaurant hidden away, where I got a plate of delectable gnocchi (best stuff EVER - well, unless it has mushrooms on it). The day was unrushed (my computer says that's not a word, but I beg to differ - as long as you know what I'm trying to say, then it's a word), and therefore really nice; at a pretty well-known cafe, Nannini, we got rice cake, and I ordered a (very expensive) hot chocolate. You know, the hot chocolate here in Italy just isn't up to scratch; some is amazing, I'll admit it, but that could be just because it's basically pure melted chocolate, which hardens if you let it sit too long. I'd have to say the worst hot chocolate I've had so far was the heated up mug of chocolate pudding I had at Schenardi's. Now that was just gross. Kids, don't heat up pudding at home. It's bad. Very bad. The best, though, was amazing - it was at the train station at Attigliano-Bomarzo at about 7:30 in the morning. I was tired and craving something to wake me up, and that hot chocolate was just the thing. It was incredible. It was thick but not overly rich, milky and delicious and absolutely the perfect thing for a rainy morning at the train station. I'm almost afraid to get another cup there, to spoil the first. Who knows if a second cup will even be as good! That was the first cup of hot chocolate I'd had yet here in Italy, and that may have been what made it just so darned amazing.
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So right, back to the Florence trip... Siena done, we loaded ourselves back on the bus and made our way through sweeping expanses of beautifully Italian countryside, the kind that is full of hills and fields and those tall thin Italian trees; the road ran along ridge after ridge which looked down into seemingly endless valleys. It was almost regretfully that we finally arrived at Volterra at dusk, leaving the beautiful scenery behind.
Volterra! We dined at the hotel both that night and the next morning, well enough. We descended upon the town somewhat like a cloud of locusts to explore the shops and nooks and crannies. It was freezing cold and my fingers were about falling off, so my first order of business was to find me a pair of gloves. They're gorgeous! Absolutely wonderful! My lovely Volterran brown leather gloves (though I sort of engaged in activities such as snowball throwing with them, so now the tips are turning purple... ah well, che sarà, sarà). Other than gloves, Volterra is known for its gorgeous alabaster. So after searching from shop to shop, surveying many a gorgeous alabaster vase, I at last purchased an alabaster... mushroom. Because my host family loves mushrooms to almost a terrifying degree. Yep, that's what I did in Volterra.
The next morning we went as a class to the museum at Volterra, which boasts an amazing collection of Etruscan sarcophagi, unlike those I'd seen before at the endlessly repetitive Musei Archaeologici Nazionali scattered throughout Italy to the point of insanity. These are small, for ashes as opposed to a body, but still bear the likeness of their occupants carved on top, some grotesquely shaped. They're really fascinating, especially after seeing endless of boring traditional sarcophagi from museum to museum. Upon release from further school-related obligation, we made a run for the nearest Despar supermarket to get panini, and then wandered about Volterra. Ryan and I found a path that lead out from the walls of Volterra and meandered around for a little ways. I should probably mention the geography of Volterra for you to fully appreciate the amazing-ness of this path: Volterra is a hill town, a town clinging to the top of a mountain surrounded on every side by endless rolling valleys and hills, and that hazy Italian horizon muting all the colors into warm and lazy summer hues. I could even hear the buzz of bees as we walked along, soaking up the sun and the view. It was far from warm, but it was gorgeous and summery, and wonderfully lazy. When the path led back inside the walls, we stumbled across an ancient Roman amphitheater, a beautiful ruin that was all the more amazing because of the vista spread out behind it. So Volterra was pretty awesome. Definitely worth the day we spent there, definitely.
And at last, Florence. Florence, Florence, Florence. You love it or you hate it, I hear. Well, I loved it. As I leaned out my hotel window and looked to my left up the street to the giant looming Dome, I thought, "this is about as European as it gets." You know that image one has of Europe? Well, it could just be my image... but I always pictured something like this street at dusk. The street was lined with cafes and colorful shop windows; couples with long heavy coats and scarves blowing playfully behind them walked hand in hand along the cobblestone street. At the end of the street, instead of an intersection, there rose suddenly the side of the Duomo, high high above the buildings around it. From my third floor view I felt above it all, since all the bustle seemed to extend only as far as the first floor. No windows above were lit - in fact the tired old façades of the four and five story buildings lining the street were all dark and quiet, in the way that only centuries-old European houses can be.
Dinner that night at a cute restaurant a little ways up from the hotel. One of the streets was lit up completely with Christmas lights already - it was a street that led up to the Duomo; remembering it, I feel like there must have been a foot of snow. There wasn't even an inch (it did not snow a bit, only rain), but that was the mood the street conveyed, with all its festive wintery lights and people bundled up in layer over layer. I can just picture the snow swirling down in all the light!
Thanksgiving night, it was - at the restaurant we had turkey and mashed potatoes, and for a moment (maybe more, but I won't admit it) I felt awfully sentimental. This was the first time I'd had either since I'd come. Such marvelously American foods - I didn't realized how much I missed them! So Aleja and I made Thanksgiving, but that's a story for another post when I'm procrastinating on homework another night.
Friday opened bright and early with a sunrise walk to Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge left unharmed during WWII. It's lined with jewelry shops, and at the center is a statue of a famous jeweler (I believe - I should check my facts, but I'm too uninspired at the moment. Chocolate'll really do that to you...). The statue is surrounded by a little fence absolutely covered in locks - all with names written or carved onto them. It's like the tree that all the high school couples carve their names into, except more mature and so much more ridiculously romantic because it's in Florence on a bridge overlooking the Arno, and it's snowing ever so lightly and it's early morning and the sky is just turning pink at the edges because the sun hasn't quite risen....
Frozen, pink-cheeked and refreshed, we returned to the hotel for a breakfast of tea and scones, and then set out for the day, which began with a brief school tour of some important sites... Of it I remember really only the Duomo, since that's sort of the center of all Florence. Upon being released from that tour, Ryan and I raced to the Uffizi to beat the strike (everything would close at 14.00, and it was already 11.00. Time was ticking!) Can we talk about how amazing is this one museum? The walls are literally cluttered with portraits, so that at first you don't even notice half of all the paintings that are there, since there's only room to display so many prominently. Statues line the corridor of the U-shaped building, and room after room off the hallway houses paintings that are ridiculously famous. As in these paintings are in dozens of text books, and I've seen images of them a hundred or more times. To really stand in front of them and see them is so overwhelming. Most amazing I think was Botticelli's Birth of Venus. A cliche favorite, maybe, but it was honestly so much more amazing in real life than in pictures. Some of the paintings I saw weren't that amazing, especially considering how famous they are. I hear the Mona Lisa isn't as great as all that (I take my source from people besides Dan Brown, thank you very much), a surprise since that painting is probably one of the most well-known in the world. Why so famous if so unremarkable? The Birth of Venus, though, is worth all the fame it's got. It's amazing. It's fantastic. It conveys so much more motion, beauty, vivacity in the real painting than in any reproduction. I have no idea how long I stood in front of the painting, but I know it was long enough to memorize just about every wrinkle in the canvas. Venus' wise, serene smile is so captivating; much more alluring than the supposedly secretive smile of Mona Lisa. Everything about her and her surroundings is beautiful, even her pudgy unromantic feet. So I'm in love with Botticelli at the moment.
You know what I would have loved to have seen, though, is the Academia - the David, and Michelangelo's unfinished statues. Those statues I find so intensely amazing. Michelangelo felt that he was freeing the figures from inside the stone, and that's the most powerful and fitting way to describe the statues, I think. The figures really look like they're trapped inside a block of marble, and struggling to escape. But it remains till another day to see them...
And so ends my fantastic stay in Florence. The next morning we (Aleja, Ryan, Peregrine and I) andiamo-ed to Bologna for the weekend, a brilliant two days. I saw my first snow storm ever, the snow coming down practically in drifts (my definition of drifts probably differs from that of someone who actually lives with snow), though apparently it was wet snow which is pretty gross after a while, though very very gorgeous. I'm happy to say that I started off the day with a snowball fight, of course, and did everything in my power to get as covered in snow as possible, running about in it till I drove my companions nuts. All in all, it was quite successful.
Oh, and can we say Harry Potter in Italian?!?!? Weird!!! They're British, they can't speak Italian! But wow, was this movie amazing. I was horrified that they cut out the Quidditch world cup (Quidditch is like the best part! What were they thinking? They totally could have lost that pointless Harry being chased randomly all over the Hogwarts roof by the dragon scene, and instead done the Quidditch match. I mean seriously, what was going through their minds? I hear it was some random nobody on set who decided the dragon scene would be cool, and Daniel Radcliffe, being a male teenager, was like "awesome!" or maybe like "wicked!" since he's British, and the scene was shot), and it was absolutely unacceptable that they put Barty Crouch Jr into the scene between maggot-baby Voldemort and Wormtail at the beginning when Frank the gardener gets killed. However beyond those two unforgivable flaws, I was absolutely amazed by how well the movie came together, considering how much they cut out. It really is written for people who know the books backward and forward (and so I was utterly in my element, having reread the series this last summer for perhaps the 4th time); I love how it jumps from scene to scene so abruptly, so that you would be lost if you didn't know the story. Well, I would assume you'd be lost; it could be they explain everything marvelously well. However I was able to easily understand only about half of the movie, mostly the shorter sentences. When characters launched into speeches, I would get hung up on the first sentence I understood and miss the next five sentences. It's like that a lot when I'm listening to Italian. I have noticed I've been able to understand a lot more even in the space of the last few weeks, though, but that problem is one that insists on persisting.... But back to the movie, I thought the voice actors were good, so I couldn't actually tell if the acting had improved in this movie. Ron's just getting more and more gorgeous per movie! I was pretty scared about his emo hair from what I'd seen of the previews, but I must say he pulls it off quite nicely. Must be that amazing red hair that grows out so nicely :)
And now I've managed to write about a 500 page essay on my weekend a month ago, I'll go to bed, having finished little of my homework (only two more days to go till winter break! How can I be expected to do anything constructive?!?). So I bid thee goodnight, adieu, ciao, till next I have some free time in which to try to bring this blog even remotely up to date. A job that'll be, indeed...
You know what it is? Damn computer chess, that's what. If I spent less time playing that, I'd spend more time updating my blog. Though updating my blog doesn't really teach me humility so thoroughly as computer chess. Except when I haven't updated it in a month and suddenly realize just how much I have to write. That's humbling. And exhausting. Good night, already!
Arrr! I wanna be a pirate!
